1. Field of the Invention
The present invention is generally related to image processing and, more particularly, is related to systems and methods for processing video data.
2. Related Art
The broadcast or on-demand communication of digital content has undergone considerable advancements recently, and has drawn in competitors from the cable, satellite, and telecom industries. In such a competitive environment, one focus has been the emergence of high definition television (HDTV) and its use in attracting new customers, the latter due at least in part to the improved perceptual picture quality associated with HDTV. An enabling technology in the transition to mainstream HDTV is found in the MPEG-4 AVC/H.264 (herein, simply H.264 or advanced video codec (AVC)) codec standard.
Although H.264 represents a major advance in algorithmic complexity compared to previous coding standards, H.264 brings with its inception a commensurate increase in decoder hardware and memory costs. For instance, H.264 compliant encoders use either context adaptive binary arithmetic coding (CABAC) or context adaptive variable length coding (CALVC) to encode the macroblock data (e.g., coefficients, motion vectors, etc.). CABAC encoding is more computationally intensive than CALVC encoding. One result of this increased complexity is that CABAC decoding operations often provide a source of throughput bottlenecks for a decoding system, since CABAC decoding is performed serially one symbol at a time.